Posts tagged ‘Bruce Gordon’

Nightwing gets the cover of Action 613, and supposedly a solo series, which is really a team-up story, beginning in this issue.

David and Smith spend this chapter putting Green Lantern through the emotional manipulations of Mind Games. Hal’s enemies Sinestro, Star Sapphire, Black Hand, Hector Hammond and the Shark appear as hallucinatory images, as do friends Arisia, Kilowog, Tomar Re, Salaak, and other members of the Green Lantern Corps.

Mind Games controls Hal’s emotional roller coaster, but the manifestations are drawn from his own subconscious. So when Mind Games makes Green Lantern feel fear, the spell is broken.

So much for Mind Games.

The story ends as Hal wonders how he came to be without fear, and his ring sucks him inside to give an answer.

By the second page, Speedy has joined the story, helping against some cigarette smugglers. Roy enlists Dick in a secret CBI mission, to get Cheshire, the mother of his child.

Cheshire is working on another assassination, as she tends to do, and sees the two heroes in the crowd.

Although this is supposedly Nightwing’s first solo series ever, Speedy dominates this, as well as the next Nightwing storyline.

The Phantom Stranger returns in this 2-part story by Kupperberg, Tom Grindberg and Dennis Janke. Bruce Gordon has just taken the Phantom Stranger to his first Woody Allen movie as this story opens. You’d swear the men were on a date.

People are dying while reading the latest book by a popular horror author. The Phantom Stranger investigates, questioning the author, whose book, Mind Games, happens to share the same name as the villain in the Green Lantern story in this issue.

The writer used an actual ancient invocation he came across while writing his book, and is dumb enough to speak it, calling forth Au Puch, who captures the Stranger.

Newell, Kitson and Patterson share the third part of the Showcase Catwoman story.

Holly Robinson dies as a result of the explosion. It’s a powerful and touching scene, but in the long run, a terrible idea. Holly was a superb supporting character for Catwoman, connecting her back to her beginnings on the streets. Eventually, the decision was made to simply ignore this story, and Holly was brought back to life.

Catwoman seeks out Holly’s cheating spouse, who stole the cat brooch before setting the bombs.

Selina gets the brooch back, but Arthur pushes her out the window.

Wright, DuBurke and Marcos continue the muddled Black Canary story.

Lots of people talk. They talk about all kinds of stuff. Drugs, illegal aliens, crashed planes and all sorts of odds and ends that loosely tie together, but the story is hardly making the effort to follow it rewarding.

Great Deadman cover for Action 610, although it really doesn’t match his story inside.

Green Lantern faces off against a sword wielding maniac without his ring in this story by David and Smith, and manages to hold him off with just his fighting skills.

To Hal’s surprise, he sees the that man is more frightened than he is. The police arrive, and the man collapses, unaware of having done anything with the sword.

Hal spends much of the rest of the story discussing his lack of fear with Arisia, who doesn’t think it’s a problem. The room service waiter gets possessed (by the same person who controlled the sword wielder, though that is not explained yet), just as Arisia opens the door to him.

The Phantom Stranger begins a series that runs sporadically through the Action Comics Weekly run. This opening chapter is by Paul Kupperberg and Kyle Baker, and takes place shortly after the events in the Phantom Stranger’s miniseries. Bruce Gordon is still palling around with him, after the Stranger defeated Eclipso, Bruce’s evil half.

In this story, the villain is a shy computer geek, into the occult, who gets taken over by his computer.

He wreaks electronic havoc until the Stranger gets involved. He wipes the computer’s memory, and the man’s, which eradicates the “demon.”

The Deadman series hits the Cold War as Deadman, in the body of Raisa Gorbachev, goes after the devil, who is inside Nancy Reagan.

The catfight is a lot of fun, as are most chapters of this Deadman serial.

Both Deadman and the devil leave the world leaders’ wives. Deadman winds up in the body of Major Kasaba, who now knows they cannot control Deadman, but still wants his help. The devil is now in the body of the CIA director, but his “boss” shows up, in the body of good ole DB Cooper again, and captures the spirit, who is really a demon named Yakim.

Pasko and Spiegle devote this installment of the Secret Six to their new mission, infiltrating Farmer Ralph’s meat processing plant.

They are taking samples of the meat there, for examination in their lab, but get caught.

Black Canary continues, by Wright, DuBurke and Marcos. There is some information about a pilot and a lawsuit, but the plot remains opaque through much of this story.

Rita and Dinah are shown talking from every conceivable angle. This might be excusable if the information made the story clear, but we get some background on Rita’s father, and his connection with loan sharks, but nothing that clearly ties together.

Still, Black Canary does get into a nifty new costume by the end of the chapter.

Detective Annual 5 is part of the Eclipso: The Darkness Within crossover running through the DC annuals in 1992. Alan Grant, John Wagner, Tom Mandrake, Jan Duursema and Rick Magyar are the creative team on this issue, which launches a storyline that runs through the various Batman annuals.

The Ventriloquist has been released from prison, and re-opened his old club, claiming to be going straight.

Batman is busy, stopping a robbery of ancient Egyptian artifacts. One of the pieces has a number of black diamonds hanging from it,one of which comes loose, and winds up in Batman’s possession. He brings it to police headquarters, where he winds up meeting with Bruce Gordon, who explains about Eclipso, and the diamonds’ power to either possess someone, or have them evoke an Eclipso.

The Ventriloquist has bugged all the tables in his club, so that he listen on the conversations of the hoodlums who dine there, and learns that the Joker’s men are waiting for their boss to lead them to a huge stash of money.

So the Ventriloquist and Scarface have their men grab the Joker first, forcing him to take them to his hideout, in a toy factory.

Commissioner Gordon hears of the Joker’s breakout, and his suppressed anger at the Joker’s shooting of Barbara causes him to evoke an Eclipso. Curiously, the diamond almost seems to draw Gordon to it.

Powered by Gordon’s anger, the Eclipso demon makes a beeline for the Joker, which also leads the police in the right direction. The Ventriloquist and Scarface are less then pleased with all the attention.

Batman and Gordon struggle with the Eclipso, while the Ventriloquist finds himself surrounded by the police, and surrenders.

Together, Batman and Gordon manage to take down the Eclipso demon, but the Joker used the distraction to get away.